While most of SF State sat saturated and in the dark during last week’s school closure, a nucleus of the school’s hardcore, diehard lecturers gathered in the University Club to strategize against proposed budget cuts.

The California Faculty Association’s (CFA) “Lectures’ Social,” a first-of-its-kind engagement, was originally planned just as a party for its members. But it has evolved into a hybrid party/meeting in response to the mounting threat of faculty cuts this summer.

Their mission: to mobilize union members via small-table discussions focused on a letter writing campaign targeting legislators and planning better lobbies.

“It makes me so angry because it’s as if [the cuts] have to be happening, but it doesn’t have to be happening,” said event organizer and CFA recruiter Pat Wynne before the start of the event. “Greed has been bleeding our infrastructure; of course, education is a large part of it.”

Adjusting to cuts includes increasing tenured professors’ workloads, which increases class size. Then, by charging teachers’ assistants with more grading, reducing professors’ office hours, and having to replace essay exams with true-or-false and multiple choice questions to save energy and time, the quality of education decreases, Wynne said.

The chaos last year from the budget shortfall and late approval will be repeated this year with magnification, Wynne explained. Instructors need time to plan, but the budgets are never in on time, so cuts and adjustments to classes often have to be made after the fall schedules are released.

Administrators have a corporate overview of education these days, and that leads us all into an “academic apartheid that doesn’t stop with adjunct faculty cuts and cuts in services," she said.

SF State adjunct lecturer, Darren Brown, was skeptical as he awaited the start of the meeting. This semester, he’s teaching four sections in Asian American studies and community changes and development.

“People are torn between having a budget, and keeping their jobs,” Brown said. “But most [CFA] members who attend these things are tenured-track professors.” He said he’s worried about his job because the cuts appear inevitable, and concerned for the students because as the bulk of the curriculum is “dumped” onto tenured professors, individual departments lose their specialization

CFA Associate Vice President-Lecturer and key speaker Elizabeth Hoffman’s presentation reported improvements made last year in quantitative analyses data collected to improve CSU enrollment and class sizes.

She also discussed maximizing pressure on legislators and the importance of building an alliance among teachers to work more effectively with the chancellor’s office, whom she later explained to Xpress hasn’t “necessarily been working against the union." But coalition-building will help improve communications, she added.

Hoffman also pointed to the deterioration of working conditions already affecting teachers from last year, expected only to worsen as support services including student assistants, computers, and phones are cut. She then put the proposed cut into a geographic perspective. “The 20 percent [proposed] cut is the equivalent to entirely shutting down three of CSU’s biggest campuses,” she said.

Immediately following her speech, the room broke into separate table discussions. All participants energetically brainstormed ideas for building a stronger coalition and passed out the form letters.

According to adjunct lecturer Catherine Siskron, who teaches Russian and business classes, most of those at her table were appreciative to have such letters at their disposal. “We are just like the students,” she said. “Most of us don’t have the time to sit and prepare a letter.”

Only about a couple dozen teachers filled just half the room. According to Wynne, half didn’t show because either the rain held them or they assumed the meeting was cancelled, or were turned away from campus parking lots; told everything was closed. Those who made it were rewarded with buffet, beverages and wine; warm, contemporary, live jazz, and comedy.

Hoffman’s lecture was book-cased by a jazz duet made up of SF State music majors Seth Johnson, 24, on Guitar, and upright bassist Josh Brozosky, 20, who provided ambience for the early stragglers; and comedian Chris Prey, who was introduced as Vice President Dick Cheney for the event’s close. Prey’s satirical delivery maintained Cheney’s character (a striking resemblance, too), for the duration of the performance – 40 minutes.

“Let’s talk about you, the lectures, the educators,” Prey said during his routine. “You know we’re doing our best to help kids – keep them from cutting classes – by cutting classes. We’re going to lower the number of complaints about teachers/from teachers, by lowering the number of teachers.”

Prey generated full chuckles despite the spectator deficit, and a handful of the audience played along following his routine when he asked if there were any questions. Those who responded addressed Prey as ‘Mr. Vice President’. After his spot he explained to Xpress how happy he was the crowd was engaged and had a “leftist-orientation.”

“I perform all around the state,” he said. “But the only other place I can maintain Cheney’s character beyond the first couple minutes of the show is in Berkeley.”